]]>The U.K.’s surveillance camera commissioner has warned that British citizens don’t seem to be aware of the implications of being constantly monitored in public places.

Although the crime-fighting efficacy of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras is debatable, they are everywhere in the U.K. (My favorite “These premises are under 24-hour CCTV surveillance” sign was in the now-closed Orwell pub — named after George — in Islington, London.) The job of the commissioner, Tony Porter, is to ensure that surveillance cameras in public places are used to “protect the public rather than spy on them,” though he doesn’t have any enforcement powers.

In an interview with the Guardian, Porter said he was troubled by “the lack of public awareness about the nature of surveillance”:

When people say ‘the public love CCTV’, do they really know what it does and its capability? Do they know with advancing technology, and algorithms, it starts to predict behavior?

The commissioner said he was worried about the rise of body-worn videos (BWVs), which are increasingly being sported by police, local council officers and even security staff in universities and supermarkets. He said he thought police BWVs – a hot topic in the U.S. recently — could dissuade the public from talking to them, and argued that on-campus BWVs raised questions about personal freedom and transparency. He also called on people who got drones for Christmas to have some sensitivity about their neighbors’ privacy.

Porter also urged more transparency in the police’s automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems, saying: “It is wrong not to be transparent because it impacts not just on the motorists, but on the whole psyche of the community. It is very dangerous to walk into a datafied society, where everybody is a number and everybody can be linked via ANPR to facial recognition, to another thing.”

I’m not sure what to add to that — Porter, a former counter-terrorism coordinator, knows what he’s talking about and he states his warnings well. It’s a pity that he doesn’t have enforcement powers, but hopefully those who do wield power will take what he says to heart, as surveillance regulation develops. Given the way the U.K. is going with online surveillance, though, I’m not feeling too hopeful about that.

]]>The British government is considering a program that would see the most promising tech graduates spend some time working for the GCHQ signals intelligence agency, the U.K.’s equivalent to the NSA, before they move into the private sector.

As per a Thursday article in The Independent, confirmed to me by the Cabinet Office on Friday, the scheme would give the U.K. a rough equivalent to the system in Israel, where many tech entrepreneurs have come out of Unit 8200 of the Israel Defence Force. Unit 8200 is also a signals intelligence operation, and the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks is a notable spinout.

According to the Cabinet Office sources quoted in the Independent piece, the idea would be to “capitalize on the expertise in GCHQ in terms of IT commercialization” by creating “a secure space where business can work with GCHQ and build an eco-system between the two.” (Side note: For more security-related U.K. civil-service-speak, check out the brilliant Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom spoof account on Twitter.)

In short, part of the attraction lies in the idea of making money out of GCHQ’s in-house spy tech. In Israel, some Unit 8200 technologies have ended up being commercialized through startups created by former members. The Cabinet Office reckons the same could be done in the U.K., particularly around cybersecurity technologies — Cabinet Office boss Francis Maude visited Israel in November and, I am told, came away with lots of ideas around “digital and cyber”.

No doubt GCHQ would also benefit from the fresh ideas bubbling away in the brains of U.K. tech’s future stars, not to mention the potential for continued links in the future.

Of course, all Israelis have to go through the army anyway, so funnelling bright young tech minds through the local spook house is a relatively easy task there. GCHQ and the Cabinet Office may have a harder time of convincing promising British techies to spend time hanging around spooks, particularly with GCHQ’s mass surveillance programs – illegal under international law — having been exposed by the leaks of NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

]]>The Samaritans, the British suicide prevention charity that recently launched a highly controversial Twitter app that scans tweets for signs of severe depression, is not backing down in the face of heavy criticism.

The app, Samaritans Radar, alerts subscribers when people they follow post tweets containing phrases like “help me”, so that the subscriber can then reach out to that person if they agree the tweet is a sign of distress. Many people with experience of mental illness have reacted in horror, suggesting that the tool is a gift for trolls and stalkers, and likely to stop mental illness sufferers from using Twitter to just get stuff off their chest. It doesn’t help that the “depressed” tweeters themselves get no notification of an alert being sent out, nor that they would have to opt out to stop being monitored in this way — a measure that assumes they know the app exists.

In the latest in a series of updates on the matter, Samaritans policy and research chief Joe Ferns said on Tuesday that the charity had taken legal advice and continued to believe that Radar is “compliant with the relevant data protection legislation.”

Ferns wrote that the Samaritans believe they are not, under U.K. law, “the data controller or data processor of the information passing through the app,” and even if they were, “given that vital interests are at stake, exemptions from data protection law are likely to apply” – in other words, they are legally allowed to process that data without the subject’s consent.

I already laid out various people’s analysis of the app in terms of U.K. and EU data protection law in a previous post so I won’t do that again, but I will note that, according to the definitions provided by the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the country’s privacy watchdog, it does very much seem that the Samaritans are playing the role of data controller:

Data controller means … a person who (either alone or jointly or in common with other persons) determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal data are, or are to be, processed.

Scanning and analyzing tweets (personal data) based on keywords, then sending out alerts based on that analysis, fits that bill pretty well (Jon Baines has written a deeper analysis on this point.) As for the “vital interests” exemption, that’s an arguable point when so many people see the app as running counter to those interests.

I was keen to find out more about the Samaritans’ legal advice, but a charity spokesperson told me via email:

As we are in discussions with the Information Commissioners Office, and continue to review the concerns raised, we are not able to give more details at this stage. We will respond to further enquiries over the coming days.

So I rang the ICO, a spokesperson for whom told me: “Whether they can release [details] or not is a decision for themselves.” So there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for the Samaritans not to discuss this matter more openly.

Which they really should. If you follow the #SamaritansRadar hashtag on Twitter, a lot of people are upset with the charity’s handling of the disquiet, even Samaritans volunteers:

I'm a Samaritan vol & I'm against #samaritansradar. Its against what I thought we stood for. I'm shocked & saddened we're not listening

A petition against the app has garnered more than 1,000 signatures. Yes, there are arguments to be made in the app’s favor – check out this post by researcher Jonathan Scourfield, who was involved with the project and points out that “there are cases of young people who have taken their lives after repeated tweets stating their suicidal feelings, to which no-one apparently responded.”

But even so, I find it curious that the Samaritans have not at least seen fit to suspend Radar while its legality and ethics are debated and established – if indeed that proves possible. The charity usually does great work, but it’s really hurting its image among many of the people it’s trying to help.

]]>Julian Assange will “soon” leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been taking refuge since breaking bail terms two years ago, the Wikileaks founder said Monday in a press conference. He provided no further details. Reports earlier on Monday suggested he is suffering from health issues. Assange has been hiding in the embassy since 2012, after being accused of rape and sexual coercion in Sweden a couple of years previously. The Australian fears being extradited to the U.S. over the leaking of classified military documents, via Wikileaks, by soldier Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Last year Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison over the leaks.

]]>Netflix is making big inroads in the U.K., where it now has close to 4.5 million subscribers, according to an estimate from Digital TV Research. This makes the U.K. Netflix’s second biggest market behind the U.S., and number three is Canada with 3 million, according to the research company.

This means that those Digital TV Research numbers are really just estimated guesses, but there are some reasons to believe that the overall ballpark is about right: The report indicates that Sweden is Netflix’s fourth-biggest market with 900,000 subscribers, and Sweden’s consumers are likely more inclined to pay for online media subscription services because Spotify paved the way for this kind of business model. Netflix’s smallest markets continue to be in Latin America, where Netflix admitted in the past that billing has proven to be more challenging than elsewhere, but the whole region is now contributing close to 2.5 million subscribers, according to the report.

]]>FreedomPop is coming to Europe, launching its free voice and data plans in Belgium later this year with plans to expand into the U.K. and other countries in 2015.

FreedomPop is a mobile virtual network operator, meaning it doesn’t own any network infrastructure and instead pays a traditional carrier for access to its network. In the U.S. its carrier partner is Sprint, while in Europe it’s KPN Belgium, though FreedomPop CEO Stephen Stokols said the deal is just the first of many it hopes to negotiate as it moves to other parts of Europe.

“Belgium is actually a test market for us,” Stokols said. “It’s small. It’s wealthy. Everyone has credit cards. It’s a good way for test the European market before we jump into Germany or the U.K.”

Like Sprint, KPN Belgium is the third-largest carrier in its home country (where it operates under the brand Base) so it’s more amenable to MVNO deals that could potentially shake up the local mobile market. Unlike Sprint, KPN and other European carriers use GSM technology and operate in a SIM card-driven services market.

That works out to be a big advantage for FreedomPop since it doesn’t have to deal with procuring, stocking and supporting smartphones. It just need to ship SIM cards and invite customers to download the iPhone and Android apps that power its core VoIP and messaging services, Stokols said.

Europe is also a much more inexpensive market than the U.S. when it comes to voice and data pricing. Stokols, however, said FreedomPop expects to see interest in its service – no matter how cheap European mobile plans are, you can’t beat free. FreedomPop plans to replicate its core freemium service plan in Belgium, offering 200 voice minutes, 500 SMS messages and 500 MBs of data at no cost. FreedomPop sells larger-bucket plans and charges customers that go over their gratis allotments.

But FreedomPop could tweak the numbers on its baseline plan as it gets closer to launch this fall. Consumer mobile pricing isn’t just cheap in Europe. Wholesale pricing for virtual operators is inexpensive as well.

“It’s half of what we pay domestically,” Stokols said. “We could give 1 GB away for free and pay the same wholesale prices we do in the U.S.”

]]>U.K.-based digital music service Bloom.fm is throwing the towel and putting its assets in the hands of a liquidator after an eleventh-hour plan to sell the company fell through. Bloom announced earlier this month that it would have to shut down, but said at the time that it was trying to find a buyer.

Here’s how Bloom CEO Oleg Fomenko put it in a release sent out Wednesday:

“After Bloom.fm was placed in administration we received incredible amount of support from our users and a lot of commercial interest from prospective buyers. One offer stood out in particular, as it would have allowed Bloom to continue in the spirit we originally intended. We have worked furiously on finalising it, but unfortunately, due to very tight timelines and complexities associated with the administration process, the deal fell through at the last minute.”

]]>As smartphone screen sizes become bigger and mobile apps communicate constantly with the network, vendors are looking to get power savings wherever they can. That’s starting to draw attention, especially from green-tech investors, to companies that specialize in a new type of battery-conserving technology called envelope tracking. On Tuesday one of those companies, Nujira, announced it has raised $20 million in new funding.

Though it sounds ridiculous to say it, envelope tracking has become a hot technology lately as its made its way into many high-end smartphones, including the Nexus 5, the Galaxy Note 3 and HTC’s newly launched One M8. The obscure technology basically optimizes the power flowing through a smartphone’s radio, decreasing the power drain on the battery.

Source: Shutterstock / koya979

The round was led by existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, Climate Change Capital, Environmental Technologies Fund, SAM Private Equity and NES Partners, as well as new investors GAM and Investec. The funding comes 18 months after Nujira closed a $12 million round, bringing its total to around $92 million.

A lot of companies that build smartphone radio frequency components have been building their own envelope trackers, including Qualcomm, Intel, RFMD, Texas Instruments and fellow ET specialist Quantance. Qualcomm has scored all of the publicly announced design wins so far, but there should be plenty of room in the market for many players. The technology will likely make it into every future generation of LTE handset, tablet, modem and module. It’s basically an inexpensive way to cut down power consumption on one of the phone’s must energy-hungry components by as much as 25 percent.

Nujira’s technology creates a tight “envelope” around the waveform in the radio (source: Nujira)

Think of LTE as classical music and 2G or 3G as heavy metal, said Jeremy Hendy, the VP of sales and marketing at Nujira, a Cambridge, U.K.–based maker of power-modulation chips. Classical music has long moments of quiet punctuated with wild crescendos, while heavy metal music is fairly uniform in loudness. Heavy metal will sound just as good (or bad) on any old amplifier, but to truly appreciate classical music you need a high-powered amp to capture the music’s nuance and delicacy, Hendy said.

“You need a high-powered amp for LTE otherwise the signal is distorted,” Hendy said. “That’s why the power on an LTE [handset] is so bad. For every 4 watts you put in you only get 1 watt out.”

The amp constantly pumps out enough power to fuel those extreme peaks, but most of the time the device actually needs far less wattage. That means a lot of energy just goes to waste. Nujira has created a power-modulation chip that wraps up the waveform in a “latex bondage suit” of sorts, Hendy said. The power the amplifier puts out closely follows the power contours of the waveform, creating an extremely energy-efficient transmission.

]]>Europeans love Chromecast too: The latest news from European retailers shows that Google’s streaming stick has been selling really well, at least in some parts of Europe, since it launched on the continent two weeks ago. Some even say that the device has been met with demand that compares to Apple’s iPad.

Google hasn’t released any firm Chromecast sales numbers, and a spokesperson only sent me this statement when contacted for this story:

“We’ve sold millions of Chromecasts to date, and we hope to replicate that success in Europe.”

Some of the retailers that Google has been partnering with across the continent have been a bit more open. Dixons Retail, owner of the U.K. electronics store chain Currys, revealed a few days ago that it sold a Chromecast every 4.5 seconds on launch day. The chain briefly sold out in some stores on launch day, and a representative called it “one of the most successful launch days, both online and in-store, in recent years,” comparing it to the introduction of the iPad.

Norway’s Elkjøp chain has also seen strong sales, forcing it to order a second batch of 40,000 additional devices a few days after launch to keep up with demand that a spokesperson called “second to none.”

Google had underestimated the success of Chromecast when it first introduced the device in the U.S. last summer, where availability was spotty for weeks after launch.

]]>Looks like the video services war in the U.K. just produced its first casualty: Sony is closing down the U.K. edition its Crackle video service on April 1 (hat tip to Broadband TV News). The company posted a notice about the closure on Crackle’s U.K. homepage that read:

“We’d like to thank all those who have supported and enjoyed Crackle UK. As of April 1, 2014 Crackle’s UK service will no longer be operating.”

Crackle is offering viewers free, ad-supported video content, including full-length movies and TV show episodes. The service also operates in the U.S. as well as Canada, Australia and close to 20 countries across Latin America, and those operations aren’t affected by this closure.

Both companies have also tried to outbid each other on content rights for British viewers, undoubtedly raising the costs for Crackle and any other third-party service to compete. And in the case of Crackle, Sony also had to monetize the service through ads, which may be even harder in a comparably small market like the U.K.